ut lingered,
and let the children linger as they pleased.

The path by the river was not properly a bridle-path, but tourists for
pleasure often lost their way in the forest, and emerged upon the roads
unexpectedly from such delicious, devious solitudes. Thus it befell
to-day when two gentlemen on horseback overtook Bessie, where she had
halted with Tom and the pony to let Jack and Willie come up. They were
drying their pink toes preparatory to putting on again their shoes and
stockings as the strangers rode by.

"Is this the way to Beechhurst, my little gypsy?" quoth the elder of the
two, drawing rein for a moment.

Bessie looked up with a sunburnt face under her loose fair hair. "Yes,
sir," said she. Then a sudden intelligence gleamed in her eyes, her
cheeks blazed more hotly, and she thought to herself, "It is my
grandfather!"

The gentlemen proceeded some hundred paces in silence, and then the one
whom Bessie suspected as her grandfather said to the other, "Short, that
is the girl herself! She has the true Fairfax face as it is painted in a
score of our old portraits."

"I believe you are right, sir. Let us be certain--let us ask her name,"
proposed the lawyer.

Bessie's little troop were now ready to march, and they set off at a
run, heedless of her cry to stop a while behind the riders, "Else we
shall be in the dust of their heels," she said. Lingering would not have
saved her, however; for the strangers were evidently purposed to wait
until she came up. Jack was now taking his turn on Jerry, and Jerry with
his head towards his stable wanted no leading or encouraging to go. He
was soon up with the gentlemen and in advance of them. Next Tom and
Willie trotted by and stood, hand-in-hand, gazing at the horses.
Bessie's feet lagged as if leaden weights were tied to them, and her
conscious air as she glanced in the face of the stranger who had
addressed her before set at rest any remaining doubt of who she was.

"Are you Elizabeth Fairfax who lives with Mrs. Carnegie?" he asked in an
abrupt voice--the more abrupt and loud for a certain nervousness and
agitation that arose in him at the sight of the child.

"Yes, sir, I am," replied Bessie, like a veritable echo of himself.

"Then, as we are travelling the same road, you will be our guide, eh?"

"The children are little; they cannot keep pace with men on horseback,"
said Bessie. They were a mile and a half from Beechhurst yet. Mr. John
Short spoke hastily in